The present invention relates to an aquatic stress tolerant high yielding citronella plant xe2x80x98Jal Pallavixe2x80x99. More particularly, the innovation relates to the development of an aquatic stress tolerant high yielding citronella plant through extensive clonal selection for the spontaneous genetic variants under artificial water stress conditions of sustained stagnation. These selections were made under high stringency of surviving ability and normal growth behavior under prolonged water stagnation in vegtatively multiplied large population of citronella (xe2x80x98Jorlab-2xe2x80x99). The variety being propagated vegetatively by tillers and is stable for commercial cultivation.
Water stagnation over undulated soil surface in a large perennial plantation of citronella leads to physiological damage (plant sickness) and even significant level of plant mortality. This as a consequence reduces the total crop productivity. Until now, not even a single high yielding variety is available which would successfully withstand water stagnation and sustain its high productivity even under aquatic situation. Unlike other perennial aromatic grasses (lemongrass and Palmarosa) citronella suffers from a drawback that it does not set viable seeds. Thus, from breeding angle, the scope of improving its plant traits is absolutely confined to genetic manipulations at clonal level. Keeping this limitation of the plant in view, planned efforts were made at this Institute""s (CIMAP""s) headquarters at Lucknow and its field station Pantnagar to explore the possibility of obtaining a water tolerant genotype with high yield potential within the otherwise high yielding variety through its extensive clonal selections.
To overcome the above difficulties, the present invention provides a novel, distinct, high yielding and stable variety of citronella plant Cybopogon winterianus, named as xe2x80x98Jal Pallavixe2x80x99 characterived by the following combination of characteristics:
(a) a variant (mutant) of the normal citronella variety xe2x80x98Jorlab-2xe2x80x99 with distinct morphology that was selected and isolated through large scale screening for any spontaneous arising variability,
(b) highly adapted to both favorable as well as unfavorable environments of continuous and aberrant water stagnation situations,
(c) production of more biomass (herbage yield) in comparison to the existing citronella varieties,
(d) production of essential oil with pleasant smell conforming to the standard concentrations for the major oil components citronellal, citronellol and geraniol much useful in pharmaceutical/aromatic preparations for various applications,
(e) unique RAPD profile, compared to those of the existing citronella varieties,
(f) exhibiting least reduction in yield (hergabe as well as essential oil) over years and thus constitutes the most suitable material for perennial plantations, and
(g) substantially high oil yield, at least 1.22%, with the following oil constituents to a maximum extent of citronellal at least 40.7%, citronellol at least 10.7% geraniol at least 17.5% and the rest being unidentified fractions in the essential oil, all totaling to 100% at different stages of growth, substantially as shown and described.